multiple choice cards

are useful in a classroom situation. Here are some print-ready cards in Word that you can photocopy onto coloured card and cut out. Put a small hole-punch hole in the top left corner and use a key-ring or treasury tag to hold them together. Even a bit of knotted string would do.


Dylan Wiliam recommends multiple choice cards as one of the whole-class checking strategies, but urges caution in the choice of questions and invites teachers to think carefully about how conversation can elicit deeper learning.
Example 1:
Given the sequence 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 what is the best rule to describe this?

• A. n + 2
• B. 5 + n
• C. 5 + 2n
• D. 2n + 3

Discussion:
Choose any pupil at random and ask them to justify their choice. This may reveal some interesting responses characterised below:
All of these are justifiable answers:

• A is correct if you are giving a term-to-term description: to get from the last term you found to the next one, you add 2.
• B is correct if you think of it as 5 add some number, n, and my teacher says "n stands for any number"
• C is correct if you want a position-to-term rule, but start counting the terms from zero. This might seem bizarre, but compare this strategy with the A-level approach to arithmetic sequences being a + (n - 1)d where a is the first-term and d is the common difference
• of course D is the 'officially correct' answer, since it gives a position-to-term formula for the nth term as is what GCSE examiners are looking for.

But notice that there is a richness of information in choosing a range of possible answers and encouraging pupils to discuss the merits of their choice.

Example 2:
Which of the cards shows a correct name for this shape?


Discussion 2:Which answers would you accept and why?Note that the phrasing of the question needs to carefully permit, but not suggest, multiple answers.